What's your earliest version of CA?


Electromen
 Share

Recommended Posts

Ridge_Runner, Easy CAD was my first CAD program too.  I ended up using AutoCAD 12 and Chief because FastCADs 3D modeling tools could not do the things I could do with AutoCAD Solids.

 

I now use TurboCAD Pro Platinum for my more complicated solid modeling work.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interesting seeing the "history" of people's CAD usage.  Here's my little trip down the memory lane of CAD programs I used before Chief. 

 

My first CAD course was AutoCAD 2.0 in 1984, which I took as a summer course at a local junior college because Cal Poly, where I was getting my architecture degree, didn't even offer CAD yet. I quickly discovered that I loved CAD!  I loved being able to have a straight line be a straight line.  I loved not having to use sliding straight edges, rulers and triangles or worry about smudges.  I loved being able to decide how thick a line should be and knowing that a line 7'-4 1/2" long would be scaled correctly.  I loved not having to use ink on mylar or having to use electric erasers for "boo-boos."  I saved up money and got a 512K MacIntosh so I could use MacPaint to help me do drawings in school.  (There were only two programs then - MacWrite and MacPaint.)  I'd print out 8x11 sheets on my dot-matrix printer and tape them into big drawing sheets and go to the Copy Center store to make a large print. 

 

About my 4th year at Cal Poly, the makers of "PowerDraw" (I think that was the one) started recruiting some of us architecture students to beta test it's CAD software on the MacIntosh computer.  Around that time we also got MacDraw and MacDraft, and then MiniCad.  I think I used all of them at one time or another.  When I graduated, I got a job at a company that used McDonnell-Douglas CAD software that was the same as used to design the Space shuttles.  It was run by a very expensive mainframe computer and after several weeks of training, we got to go in the freezing cold darkened room with a couple stations to do our work.  The company had drafters on those stations 24 hours a day because it was so expensive.  I got the 5am to 1pm shift. 

 

After about a year or two, those of us that had used Mac computers tried to convince the bosses to shift to individual computers.  We finally convinced them to switch to Vectorworks, and thankfully didn't have to do round-the-clock work shifts anymore!  I used that program for many years.  I eventually started my own business and had a church project that was very complicated to do, and at that time it took 15-20 hours to get a single final raytrace image.  I saw an ad for Chief Architect in a magazine while working on that project and decided to try the trial version.  I was able to do things so much easier and more intuitively, I was amazed.  I ordered Chief 9.5 that very week and haven't looked back since! 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Ridge_Runner said:

ACAD 13 - now that was a version that should have never been released! They should have skipped it and just waited on ver. 14. No wonder you only used it "about 8 months."

 

Nuts,  I thought 13 was the first good one.....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 11/18/2017 at 10:01 AM, raltd9245 said:

version 4, trained by the late Steve blake, ART trainer 

I also moved over from Home Architect.Befor that I started using VCAD in 1983. Much better product thanj AutoCad back then. It was menu driven much easier to use. The never went to 3D therefore the move to Chief. although I still draw some details in VCAD, much faster, then DXF and inport to Chief.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
 Share